I flew to
Amman from Kuwait City.
It was a short two-hour flight on Royal Jordanian Airlines. The plane
detoured south after leaving Kuwait City, so as to fly over Saudi Arabia instead of Iraq.
Seemed like a good idea to me!

I intended to take a bus from Amman to
Petra ("planned" would be too strong a word here!). When I asked at the
Amman airport they said, "No bus. Saturday. No bus. Take
taxi". I wasn't about to take a taxi 240 km (each way!), so I rented a
car. Fortunately, I had gotten an "International Driving Permit" the
night before I left Dallas, on a lark, just in case ... It turned out to be a great
decision!

What an experience! I had an el
cheapo Daewoo, with a standard transmission. Now this may not seem like a big
deal, but I have only been driving a standard for about a year now - I taught myself when
I bought my grey car! So I set out alone in a car that I wasn't sure I could
drive, with a roadmap written all in Arabic, reading (mostly) Arabic road signs, and I
decided to take the scenic route since I had some time to kill (Dead Sea Road to the
Kings Highway).

I drove to the
Dead Sea first. That
wasn't on my original plan, but I didn't think I'd ever be there again. Of course I
had to stick my feet in the Dead Sea. It is every bit as salty as people
claim!

The big hotels take up the more desirable
bathing locations, and provide the only showers. But I wasn't staying at one of
these hotels ... I saw a Bedouin encampment, (below center image), and went
four-wheeling for about 1/2 mile to get to the shore (nothing handles quite like a
rental car!). The shore is very muddy, and I couldn't completely bathe in
the Dead Sea because there was no place to shower afterwards. I rolled up my pants
as far as I could, and waded right in. I had a "high water mark" of salt
brine on my legs, along with copious muck from the shore. Thank goodness for the
"baby wipes" I had with me.

The Dead Sea

The Dead Sea
(if you look closely on the beach, you can see the Bedouins on the shore)

The Dead Sea
(see the salt crystals on the shore, with Israel and the West Bank faintly visible on the other shore)

Then I drove through a bunch of small towns and through the mountains to Petra.
Western
Jordan is quite hilly - the Dead Sea is in the Great Rift Valley, 1,296 feet below sea
level, and the hills are another 3000 ft above sea level. The hills aren't
very large - but they are amazingly steep - and the Jordanian roads aren't very
good. I spent a lot of time down-shifting to keep the car from careening wildly off
the edge of the narrow, twisting road! When the road was flat I had to watch
out for flocks of sheep, or camels. I was surprised at the number of police/military
checkpoints I had to go through out in way-rural Jordan - especially in the area adjoining
the West Bank.

A herd of camels grazing
(look closely). Can't imagine what they can find to eat though ...

Near Petra (30 km), all the roads were marked as closed and
detoured. That was a bad experience. For over an hour I couldn't find a way to
get to Petra. Finally I saw some other cars go right past the
"Closed-Detour" sign, so I did the same thing (this was just about the time that
I was really afraid that I was going to be spending the night sleeping in the car in the
desert someplace!).

Other observations
about Jordan:
* The roads are terrible!
* The road signs are non-existant, confusing, or worse (and generally in Arabic), and
spaced at 30 mile intervals
* All the pickup trucks are old white Toyota's with wide red door/body stripes
* The shepherds are infuriatingly convinced that they (and the sheep) own the road and
will cross whenever, wherever, and at whatever (slow) pace they would like
* "You're welcome", the ubiquitous reply to everything, including rejection,
clearly means something a bit different to them than it does to us!

Jordan is fabulously rich with both
religious and
historical sites. I
hope to someday go back and see some of what I missed.